My rule of thumb with Red Hat/Fedora is that odd numbered releases are stable, as I've had good experiences with Red Hat 7.1, 7.3, 9 and Fedora Core 3. I had Fedora Core 4 on my laptop as that was the latest available when I bought it, and I was quite happy with it, but I decided to install Fedora 7 on June 6th 2007. So this review is after about a month of usage. Note even though the "good" section below is quite small in size, it's large in substance. So in summary, F7 is three steps forward and two steps back, compared to FC4. Also rather than just complaining, I will try and report/fix the bugs I found, and will update the items below with links accordingly.

The good

• Battery life is increased somewhat, due to tickless kernel etc. and it will get even better in future
• gnome-2.18 vs gnome-2.10 (FC4)
  • gnome-terminal is much faster
  • gnome-terminal simulates 6 up/down key strokes for every reposition of the scroll wheel which is useful
  • nautilus much more usable. For example, the equivalent of my open shell at current directory script is included by default
• startup of python 2.5 interpreter much faster
• evince is much faster. This really is a highly polished application
• suspend works
• wireless mostly works out of the box
• laptop function keys mostly work. (LCD brightness, suspend)
• The 3D window manager from Novell (which is disabled by default) mostly works. The "Exposé" like feature is the main advantage I can see, and this can be activated using Ctrl-Alt-Up key, or by moving the mouse to the top right hand corner.

The bad

• gnome 2.18 creates directories in my $HOME called Videos, Templates, Pictures, Music, ... !?
• The character map applet still starts up in the Arabic section by default.
• No error shown for applications started from gnome menus that don't start (due to missing libs for example)
• state switches (keyboard shortcuts) still aren't toggles by default. Alt-F10 to maximise and Alt-F5 to unmaximise? You wouldn't have a power on switch on the front of a device and a power off switch on the back (unless you were Korean or something)
• gnome-power-statistics doesn't display Watts used in suspend mode correctly. It could guess at least from history in combination with before and after charge levels? Note this is a very nice applet, and Richard Hughes deserves a lot of kudos for his work in this area
• Just after unplugging AC, hovering over the battery applet shows 9 hours remaining (usually I get 2 hours from my battery)
• xkeycaps menu entry added twice
• firefox 2.0.0.4
  • It now cores occasionally when it never did before, especially on close (not plugin related I think)
  • longer to startup (especially on first boot)
  • accesskeys don't work
• file command doesn't give the process name for core files any more
• grep command is 5 times slower in UTF8 locales (compared to breezy or FC4)
• cal command doesn't highlight today
• sort -R command doesn't randomize in UTF-8 locales
• There is no kerning on the default font (liberation). Bitstream Vera not installed any more?
• Must enter wireless WEP hex key in upper case!
• Needed to manually map laptop multimedia keys which were handled automatically by Ubuntu breezy. This will improve though.
• subpixel rendering not set automatically for LCD
• 3D desktop issues (note compiz is off by default, and I have disabled it because of the following issues)
  • no option to disable fade out windows etc. All I want actually is the "Exposé" functionality
  • no "make window full screen" shortcut (unless apps implement it themselves)
  • No "launch xterm" shortcut. Needed to install gconf-editor and edit apps/compiz/allscreens/...
  • alt-tab on desktop with 2 apps, shows 3 windows? Very confusing
  • I needed to set the number of workspaces to 3 to match the 3D switcher, as otherwise it was too confusing
  • Previously maximised apps (firefox for e.g.), sometimes start with a size slightly wider than the screen width
  • The icon representation of maximised apps in the workspace switcher are randomly missing in the presence of maximised apps in other workspaces
  • sometimes (usually after app startup) when windows resized the apps don't get a "redraw" signal, and hence don't draw until the window is resized again
  • sometimes (until app restart) mouse clicks on widgets with chinese text are not registered
  • sometimes (until app restart) mouse clicks on small parts of a window are registered with the window underneath
  • Turning on "focus on hover" requires X restart for "raise delay" setting to be honoured
  • When Alt-Tabbing through windows, the wrong window gets keyboard focus
  • After Alt-Tabbing through windows, the wrong window gets keyboard focus unless there are some overlapping windows
  • The gnome screenshot applet can not capture the borders of compiz windows
• most gl screensavers are CPU bound on my 915GM laptop with X.Org Intel driver v2.0.0, compared to practically no CPU usage on my 4 year old GForce4 420 Go laptop with nvidiva binary driver (update: I'm reliably informed that this is due to hardware limitations)
• can't select a subset of screensavers to [randomly] cycle through
• how to Ctrl-C yum (It doesn't distinguish between network error and Ctrl-C, and just retries a new mirror)

The ugly

• Some packages were not signed and hence couldn't be installed. I had to do: sudo yum --nogpgcheck install tkcvs scons notecase
• The package manager, pirut, seems quite immature:
  • It installed many packages without dependencies (due to bug triggered by previous bug). Lots of work was required with yumutils etc. to install the necessary packages: package-cleanup --problems | sed -n s/Package ([^ ]*) .*/1/p | sort -u | while read package; do sudo rpm -e $package && sudo yum -y install $package; done
  • Doesn't show size of package or selected packages
  • Gave dependency errors when I had "printer support" unselected (and R at least selected)
• The Tira-2 kernel driver crashes
• ctrl-{left,right} doesn't work any more in vim within gnome-terminal. OK in gvim and vim in xterm and shell in gnome-terminal?
• LCD brightness applet does not work (but LCD brightness laptop function keys do?)
• gnome-background-properties + gdm-binary spun the CPU when selected clouds SVG background
• animated "Busy-Interactive" (left_ptr_watch) mouse pointer flickers (and looks terrible IMHO)
• Can't change to virtual terminals. The text ones are just blank?
• panel (menus etc.) locked up, requiring reboot (restarting X just locked, and since I could change to a VT, I needed to reboot)
• rsync version 2.6.9 protocol version 29 doesn't output status for files that only change contents and not timestamps
• WPA + wireless doesn't work (wpa_supplicant seg faults on startup)
• Certain characters broadcast in SSIDs (like '/') cause the network manager applet to crash